


Stuck in a Dull Dream

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo Amnesty Fills [3]
Category: Heavy Rain
Genre: (Past) Child Death, Gen, References to Death/Murder, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 11:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3976111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys never really leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stuck in a Dull Dream

The boys never really leave.  
  
As he parks his car outside of his building, Jeremy Bowles appears in the back seat. He’s not angry or sad; he’s confused. _My mom says I’m not supposed to stay out after it gets dark. I know you’re a cop and everything, but I need to go home. I need to go home._  
  
He shuts his eyes and leans his head against the steering wheel.  
  
“You can’t go home. You need to accept that. Your father didn’t come for you. He failed you.”  
  
When he looks into the rearview mirror again, Jeremy is gone.  
  
He sighs, gets out of the car, and heads up to his apartment.  
  
Reza Hassan appears on the staircase that leads up to his floor. The boy’s eyes are large and sad, like a kicked puppy. _Why did you kill me?_ They ask. _I trusted you. You were a police officer. I thought you were safe. Why did you hurt me?_ He stares back and offers the only explanation he has:  
  
“I didn’t kill you. The rain did.”  
  
He steps around Reza and keeps walking.  
  
_He_ didn’t kill any of them. He did not choke or shoot or stab them. He simply left them alone, underground. It was their fathers who had killed them. Their fathers hadn’t come for them. They had _failed_ their sons.  
  
So why did they blame him?  
  
It’s not his fault.  
  
Johnny Winter sits against the wardrobe that leads into his secret room. He glares at him with the ferocity of someone badly scorned. _I hate you. I hate you so much. You took me away from my mother. Screw my father: My mother needed me, and now she has no one. I hate you for that._  
  
His skin stings under the scrutiny of that glare. He turns away.  
  
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.  
  
Johnny is kicking the wardrobe. He wants acknowledgement.  
  
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.  
  
_Look at me!_ The glare that he can’t see says. _Look at me, you bastard! LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID TO ME!_  
  
His own mother fell apart after John died and he was taken away. She was in the hospital with dementia that was getting increasingly worse. The only thing that had stood between her and happiness was his father, when he failed to save John. If he had just taken ten goddamn minutes out of his happy hour(s), John would still be there. John would be alive.  
  
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.  
  
“I didn’t do anything to you,” He snaps, still without turning around. “You drowned. You drowned because your father left you to die. I didn’t do anything but take you there in the first place.”  
  
**THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.**  
  
“The water wasn’t that high. You had your chance to stay alive. Your father had his chance to come get you, and he didn’t. Why don’t you realize that? Why don’t _any_ of you realize that?”  
  
**_THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP-_**  
  
“STOP IT!” He bellows, whipping around, a savage desire for violence bursting forth so strong that he thinks he _would_ kill Johnny if the boy wasn’t already-  
  
He freezes.  
  
All eight boys stand before him, all of the boys whose fathers tried and failed to save them. A few look haunted. Others look angry.  
  
They all think the same thing:  
  
_You killed us._  
  
_It’s your fault._  
  
_Not ours._  
  
_Not our fathers’._  
  
**_Yours._**  
  
He backs away, shaking his head.  
  
“No.”  
  
Johnny looks him right in the eye, gives him a cold smile, and nods.  
  
As if on cue, he hears something crashing and shattering in his secret room behind the wardrobe. He blinks, and the boys are gone. After a long moment, wondering if he’ll be grabbed by cold, invisible hands if he tries to get close, he makes a move for the wardrobe.  
  
The room is a mess.  
  
The lights are flickering, smashed; and his orchids, his precious orchids, have been ripped from their planters and strewn all over the ground, stomped on and rippled apart.  
  
He should clean them up, but he can’t.  
  
He can’t think.  
  
He can’t plan.  
  
All he can do is back out of the room, slowly, as a soft chorus of whispers rises around him:  
  
_Your fault, your fault, you killed us, it is_  
  
_all_  
  
_your_  
  
**_fault._**  
  
He can’t even rail against the accusation the way he did before. He doesn’t have the energy, and he doesn’t have the conviction.  
  
It’s not enough to make him stop, it’s not enough to make him regret, but it is enough to paralyze him for that night as he remembers the faces of those boys, their eyes, their _words._  
  
Because deep down, however deluded he is, however much he might have himself convinced otherwise, Scott knows the truth about what he’s done.  
  
And if he forgets, the boys will be back to remind him.  
  
-End


End file.
